Package Creation and Metadata 🧰

Get Ready

Check required packages

all(c("devtools", "roxygen2", "testthat", "knitr", "pkgdown") %in% installed.packages())

Check development toolchain and git

library(devtools)

has_devel()

Lay the foundations

Load devtools and create your package infrastructure

library(devtools)
create_package("~/Desktop/libminer")

Confirm git is configured correctly (and update if necessary)

This should have been done in your setup, but it’s not a bad idea to double check.

git_sitrep()
dev_sitrep()

If the above command returns unsatisfactory information (most importantly, do you have a username and email configured), run the following command to configure git:

use_git_config(
  user.name = "Your Name",
  user.email = "Your Email"
)

Initialize this package as a git repo

use_git()

Use devtools

We can load devtools automatically via our .Rprofile file so that it is always loaded during development

use_devtools()

Paste the contents of your clipboard in .Rprofile, and restart R.

Write your first function

Open a new file in `R/` to hold your code

use_r("lib-summary")

Write your function definition in this file

lib_summary <- function() {
  pkgs <- utils::installed.packages()
  pkg_tbl <- table(pkgs[, "LibPath"])
  pkg_df <- as.data.frame(pkg_tbl, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
  names(pkg_df) <- c("Library", "n_packages")
  pkg_df
}

Load your package with `load_all()`

load_all()

And test out our new function:

lib_summary()

                          Library n_packages
1 /home/runner/work/_temp/Library        118
2      /opt/R/4.4.2/lib/R/library         29
3 /opt/R/4.4.2/lib/R/site-library          1

Check your package

check()

Set a license

use_mit_license()

DESCRIPTION file:

Package: libminer
Title: Explore Your R Libraries
Version: 0.0.0.9000
Authors@R: 
    person("Jane", "Doe",
           email = "jane.doe@something.com", 
           role = c("aut", "cre"),
           comment = c(ORCID = "XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX"))
Description: Provides functions for learning about your R libraries, and the 
    packages you have installed.

Check again

check()

Use GitHub

use_github()

Push all your committed code to that repository

At this step you may be required to enter in your GitHub username and password.

git push --set-upstream origin main

Set a default DESCRIPTION

This avoids having to do this manually every time

edit_r_profile()

And add this to your .Rprofile file

# Set usethis options:
options(
  usethis.description = list(
    "Authors@R" = utils::person(
      "Jame", "Doe",
      email = "jane.doe@example.com",
      role = c("aut", "cre"),
      comment = c(ORCID = "0000-1111-2222-3333")
    )
  )
)

options(
  warnPartialMatchArgs = TRUE,
  warnPartialMatchDollar = TRUE,
  warnPartialMatchAttr = TRUE
)